Today begins the second phase of the Covid-19 vaccine programme, with the first members of the public receiving doses of the easier to use Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. But will the effort be thwarted by the emergence of two new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the Kentish strain and the South African strain? Yesterday, Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, gave his opinion. The Kentish strain, he said, does not greatly worry him. Although it has mutations that appear to make it more transmissible, they should not, he says, interfere with the working of any of the vaccines. More concerning, he believes, is the South African strain, which has ‘pretty substantial changes’ to the structure of the protein which enables the virus to attach itself to human cells — in particular to an area known as the receptor binding domain.
What we can’t do is to prevent the South African strain from reaching Britain
Bell likened the structure of the virus to a head and two shoulders.
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